Artist Growth Raises $2M to Help Musicians Make a Real Living

A Nashville startup founded by singer-songwriter Matt Urmy, Artist Growth, has raised a total of $2 million in seed and Series A financing, Venture Capital Dispatch has learned. Its Web and mobile apps help musicians and their support staff manage their careers, end to end.

Urmy said he was inspired to build Artist Growth by his own frustrations as a touring musician.

“Reporting and getting paid royalties for your work and performances was this cumbersome process, spread across too many disconnected apps that didn’t feel good,” he says.

He also observed that while traveling the country and performing, musicians don’t have time to research which radio stations they should call up, venues they should try to play, and where they can connect with a potential new fan base.

While Urmy used to make his living from music, he set his artistic career aside, mostly, when he had a son, now six years old. “I needed to have things like health care and life insurance,” he recalls.

Prior to starting Artist Growth, he went into health care, moving from a job as a patient transporter, into research, eventually landing a data analyst role at the Sarah Cannon Research Institute. “With a day job, I still toured two weekends a month, year-round, raising my son as a single father,” he says.

Chris Howard Photography

Matt Urmy, chief executive of Artist Growth.

Entrepreneurship is even more hectic; Urmy only gets about six hours of time a week to play guitar, sing and write songs. He used to play six hours a day. His instrument of choice was custom-built by his father Norm Urmy, the luthier behind Red Mountain Guitars.

With Matt Urmy’s little spare time, he is putting the finishing touches on an album produced by “Cowboy” Jack Clement, who brought artists like Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Louis Armstrong and Townes Van Zandt to fame, and who penned Americana classics like “Ballad of a Teenage Queen.”

A move into the startup scene is not the only thing that delayed the release of Urmy’s record. Cowboy Jack’s home and studio burned down in 2011, and with it, irreplaceable recordings of sessions dating back to the ’60s.

“His tapes melted, tragically, but we sent whatever we could–mangled, burnt hard drives–to a data recovery service that luckily rescued our work. I’m adding a song called ‘Out of the Ashes,’ which I wrote for Jack,” says Urmy, “but the record is due out in June this year.”

Last week, at the interactive and music festival South by Southwest, Urmy attended “strictly for business,” and didn’t perform. “I’ve had to learn to channel my creative energy into business. It’s not an easy transformation,” the chief executive says.

Artist Growth’s software costs up to $10 a month per entertainer, and allows each one to have multiple users associated with an account–from the people who work at “merch tables,” to press reps and tour managers.

The app analyzes data from the social Web, including networks like Facebook, Twitter and streaming music services like Spotify, to guide musicians to reach fans or new audiences online and off. It also allows musicians to report their playlists “with two clicks from a mobile phone,” says Urmy, to performing rights organizations.

Among Artist Growth’s partners are ASCAP and BMI, which track and pay artists and composers royalties due for live performances of their songs in bars, clubs, dining establishments or other music venues.

Jacobson expects the six-employee Artist Growth to increase its user base, and the time users spend using the app each week in 2013. He also expects the company’s annualized revenue to surpass $5 million this year. “There’s potential to use this software for project management, clinical trials, and in a number of other verticals beyond music,” Jacobson believes.

Next week, the company plans to release the latest version of its Web and mobile apps.

Write to Lora Kolodny at lora.kolodny@dowjones.com. Follow her on Twitter at @lorakolodny

(UPDATE: This story was updated to add Mark Montgomery to the list of investors.)

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